Being ready for the second coming

I’d like to start the sermon by wishing you happy new year. Because it is a new year; it’s a new liturgical year because today is the first Sunday in Advent, and Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical calendar. For Christians in the West the churches calendar is divided into two seasons, Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, in which we look at the stories of Jesus birth; his coming into the world as a human being and becoming one of us and the events that surround that, and Lent, Easter, and Pentecost when we focus Jesus ministry, betrayal, death, resurrection and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The rest of the year we call ‘ordinary time’.

Each liturgical year we focus on one of the synoptic gospels; in the liturgical year that has just ended we focused on the gospel of Luke, but for this coming year many of our readings will come from the gospel according to Matthew, which is where todays gospel reading came from.

But first, there is a misunderstanding about what Advent is. We live in a society that goes overboard at Christmas. If we were to go outside and ask people what advent is, almost everyone would say it’s about preparing for Christmas. For many people it’s about physically preparing for Christmas; buying presents, sending cards, preparing food, going shopping, getting everything just so, so that when Christmas comes, we have everything we could possibly want, and more.

But of course, it’s not just about physical preparation; we have to spiritually prepare for Christmas too, but even here we often misunderstand Advent. Because Advent isn’t just about preparing for the baby Jesus. Advent is also about preparing for Jesus returning in glory.

A number of years ago I spent a year worshipping at a Seventh Day Adventist church. There’s a long story about why that was that I won’t bore you with, but I developed a high respect for Seventh Day Adventism. Their two defining doctrines were a belief that Saturday is the day of the week we are commanded to rest rather than Sunday, and they took the sabbath very seriously; that was the seventh day bit, and they also believed that Jesus return was imminent, and we had to be ready for him when he did. That was Adventism; They lived their lives in the expectation that Jesus would return, and probably within their lifetimes.

And that’s why the lectionary readings during Advent are often quite dark and apocalyptic, looking less towards baby Jesus and more towards the end of the world, about the second coming. It’s worth remembering that the early church lived like the Adventists do today. They expected the Jesus who they had seen ascend to heaven to come back within their lifetimes and they tried to live their lives accordingly. It’s something the modern church in the West has lost, and I think that’s a pity.

Both our bible reading today are about the second coming. Our gospel reading today is from a long conversation that Jesus is having with the disciples. It’s during the last week of Jesus life. He and the disciples are in Jerusalem and have been visiting the temple. The disciples innocently point out all the temple buildings and Jesus says; “you see these buildings, I tell you that not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” and he goes on to describe the terrible things that are going to happen in the future.

In the passage we heard today he talks about how no one will know the day of the coming of the son of man. He says it three times, to emphasise its importance and he makes a comparison to Noah’s flood. “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

Jesus is warning us that life will seem normal, that life will go on being normal, right up until the end. We would like to think we would get some warning, some inkling that something is going to happen so that we can get our affairs in order, but that isn’t going to be the case says Jesus, you’ll just have to be ready all the time.

Have any of you been watching the BBC adaption of HG Wells classic story “The War of the Worlds” which is on BBC1 on Sunday evenings? The book was written in the Victorian era and describes a Martian invasion of earth. The first episode of the TV series is like Downton Abbey full of respectable people living innocent lives utterly unprepared for the Martian invasion and utterly complacent when it begins. It’s that complacency that Jesus is partly warning us about, the belief that because things are alright now, they will always be alright.

So how should we be ready? Paul gives some advice in our New Testament reading today. Again, Paul was writing at a time when most Christians thought that Jesus would return in their lifetime. We need to be careful about not drawing the wrong conclusion about the fact they appear to be wrong. Early Christians thought Jesus would return in their lifetime, yet two thousand years later the second coming has not yet taken place. Have all those people who have lived their lives expecting to see Jesus return been fools, are all those Adventists expecting today to see Jesus return foolish?

I don’t believe so. I think we should all live like that. How does Paul tell us to live as if the “night were nearly over; the day almost here”, by which he means Jesus return. Paul tells us to put off the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. He says; “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What does clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ mean? Well it means two things; firstly, it means we are called to cloth ourselves in Jesus values; to live and think like Jesus. We are called to value what Jesus valued and put first what he put first. We are called to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength, and we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves; to not forget the weak, the vulnerable and those without anyone to speak up for them.

We are called to behave justly, and love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. We are called to live simply, to be suspicious of wealth and to be generous with what God has given us, has entrusted us with, because it’s not really ours we can’t take it with us. We are called to build up treasure in heaven, where moths and vermin can’t destroy it or where thieves can’t break in and steal.

We are called to judge no one, to forgive everyone who wrongs us, to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile, and we are called to pray for those who persecute us[1]

And it means we are called to pick up our cross and follow Jesus, our master and our friend, wherever following him will lead us. Why? Because that’s what Jesus did, and that’s what being clothed in the Lord Jesus Christ means. It means living the Jesus way;

As Jesus says; “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.[2]

But that’s not all that being clothed in the Lord Jesus Christ means, because right though it is to strive to live like that, each and every one of us fails to live like that, each and every day. One day we will stand before God in judgement and the bible tells us that all of us have sinned, and all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. It isn’t enough to be clothed in the values of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ,

Because the bible goes on “and all are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.”[3] Our own righteousness is as filthy rags, the bible actually uses that term, but when we stand before God trusting Jesus its not our righteousness that God will see, it’s the righteousness of Jesus, who lived a perfect life. We need to be clothed in the righteousness of God.

One of my favourite bible characters is the unnamed thief on the cross. It is never too late to turn to Jesus; Jesus will never reject us if we turn to him. How much better is it though, to live our lives following Jesus, trusting Jesus, listening to Jesus and trying to learn, however imperfectly to do the will of Jesus? That’s what being ready to meet Jesus is all about, whether at the second coming or when our own lives come to an end.

A life lived clothed in Jesus Christ is not a life wasted, it is a life lived to the full, it is a life lived both in the moment, as we trust Jesus day to day, and for eternity. Most of all, it’s a life lived intimately in the presence of Jesus.

The reality for most of us is that Christ will not return within our lifetimes, none the less we might meet him face to face any moment. Over the last few months two friends from my childhood, parents of my friends, have died unexpectedly. Although elderly, they didn’t die of old age or illness. One was killed by a reversing car and the other fell over in the street, banged her head and died two days later from a brain haemorrhage. Both were strong Christians who had lived their lives intimately ‘clothed in the Lord Jesus Christ’, Death came as a surprise to both of them, but they lived their lives knowing Jesus and ready to stand before him. Death came as a surprise, but it was a surprise they were ready for, and we need to be ready too.

This time of year, this season of Advent, is a time to reflect on this ourselves. Yes, are we ready to meet the baby Jesus? But more importantly, are we ready to meet the glorified Jesus? This is the time of year to think about it. Let’s spend some time over the next four weeks as we approach Christmas reflecting on this.

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